Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common type of schizophrenia in most parts of the world. The clinical picture is dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, delusions, usually accompanied by hallucinations, particularly of the auditory variety, and perceptual disturbances. Disturbances of affect, volition, and speech, and catatonic symptoms, are not prominent.

hallucinatory voices that threaten the patient or give commands, or auditory hallucinations without verbal form, such as whistling, humming, or laughing;

hallucinations of smell or taste, or of sexual or other bodily sensations; visual hallucinations may occur but are rarely predominant.

Thought disorder may be obvious in acute states, but if so it does not prevent the typical delusions or hallulcinations from being described clearly. Affect is usually less blunted than in other varieties of schizophrenia, but a minor degree of incongruity is common, as are mood disturbances such as irritability, sudden anger, fearfulness, and suspicion. “Negative” symptoms such as blunting of affect and impaired volition are often present but do not dominate the clinical picture.

The course of paranoid schizophrenia may be episodic, with partial or complete remissions, or chronic. In chronic cases, the florid symptoms persist over years and it is difficult to distinguish discrete episodes. The onset tends to be later than in the hebephrenic and catatonic forms.

Actually read up on any of these people and ask yourself this question:

If religion were not involved, wouldn’t we pronounce these individuals insane, commit them and prescribe a course of electro-convulsive therapy and anti-psychotics? Of course we would. When you think about it, religion flows from a succession of madmen and madwomen, a tradition it continues.

Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common type of schizophrenia in most parts of the world. The clinical picture is dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, delusions, usually accompanied by hallucinations, particularly of the auditory variety, and perceptual disturbances. Disturbances of affect, volition, and speech, and catatonic symptoms, are not prominent.

hallucinatory voices that threaten the patient or give commands, or auditory hallucinations without verbal form, such as whistling, humming, or laughing;

hallucinations of smell or taste, or of sexual or other bodily sensations; visual hallucinations may occur but are rarely predominant.

Thought disorder may be obvious in acute states, but if so it does not prevent the typical delusions or hallulcinations from being described clearly. Affect is usually less blunted than in other varieties of schizophrenia, but a minor degree of incongruity is common, as are mood disturbances such as irritability, sudden anger, fearfulness, and suspicion. “Negative” symptoms such as blunting of affect and impaired volition are often present but do not dominate the clinical picture.

The course of paranoid schizophrenia may be episodic, with partial or complete remissions, or chronic. In chronic cases, the florid symptoms persist over years and it is difficult to distinguish discrete episodes. The onset tends to be later than in the hebephrenic and catatonic forms.

Actually read up on any of these people and ask yourself this question:

If religion were not involved, wouldn’t we pronounce these individuals insane, commit them and prescribe a course of electro-convulsive therapy and anti-psychotics? Of course we would. When you think about it, religion flows from a succession of madmen and madwomen, a tradition it continues.

As the sister of a paranoid schizophrenic, i can tell you there is a vast difference between schizophrenia and mysticism. I’d also on a side note like to point out that the bible makes a clear distinction between Jesus healing people of mental illness, driving out demons from the possessed, and talking to God.

First of all, St. Catherine of Siena’s persecution was not a delusion of persecution, but able to be proved by people speaking ill of her, jealous of her prayerfulness.
Secondly, you can tell the difference between a mystic’s messages from God and a schizophrenic’s perceived messages from God QUITE easily. A schizophrenic is highly suggestible and often random. Their delusions can be influenced by conversations with people, which is easy to track, and they can contradict each other. A mystic’s messages from God will never contradict the teachings of the Church and will never contradict a previous message. It will also be easy to see whether or not it was influenced by a prior conversation. My sister told me she thought the nurses in her home were going to send her to prison. They told her that one of the ingredients in her meds was derived from a cocaine like substance. She took that to mean they thought she was somehow breaking down her pills and sorting out the coke-like powder and selling it. I find it incredibly offensive that someone could think the rational and religious writings of St. Catherine and the other saints listed are of the same caliber as, say, the mission Charles Manson was on. Nobody who knew anything whatsoever about schizophrenia would make such an assertion. They not only show their ignorance of the heroes of our faith, but also ignorance of the devastating mental illness that is schizophrenia. People come up with snide little comparisons like this all the time to use science to disprove God. I really hate it. It’s a foolhearty endeavor anyways because by His very nature, God can neither be proved or disproved by science.

[quote=johnnycatholic]As the sister of a paranoid schizophrenic, i can tell you there is a vast difference between schizophrenia and mysticism. I’d also on a side note like to point out that the bible makes a clear distinction between Jesus healing people of mental illness, driving out demons from the possessed, and talking to God.

First of all, St. Catherine of Siena’s persecution was not a delusion of persecution, but able to be proved by people speaking ill of her, jealous of her prayerfulness.
Secondly, you can tell the difference between a mystic’s messages from God and a schizophrenic’s perceived messages from God QUITE easily. A schizophrenic is highly suggestible and often random. Their delusions can be influenced by conversations with people, which is easy to track, and they can contradict each other. A mystic’s messages from God will never contradict the teachings of the Church and will never contradict a previous message. It will also be easy to see whether or not it was influenced by a prior conversation. My sister told me she thought the nurses in her home were going to send her to prison. They told her that one of the ingredients in her meds was derived from a cocaine like substance. She took that to mean they thought she was somehow breaking down her pills and sorting out the coke-like powder and selling it. I find it incredibly offensive that someone could think the rational and religious writings of St. Catherine and the other saints listed are of the same caliber as, say, the mission Charles Manson was on. Nobody who knew anything whatsoever about schizophrenia would make such an assertion. They not only show their ignorance of the heroes of our faith, but also ignorance of the devastating mental illness that is schizophrenia. People come up with snide little comparisons like this all the time to use science to disprove God. I really hate it. It’s a foolhearty endeavor anyways because by His very nature, God can neither be proved or disproved by science.
[/quote]

I know several people with Schizophrenia, including one in my own family and several people that I help in my job.

The thing that I find most interesting is the fact that I have never heard one who claims to hear from God or Angels. They all seem to hear just voices or the devil himself. The other thing that I see in many patients with this disorder is the fact they have a history of substance abuse. Usually Cocaine, Heroin or LSD.

If you listen to Father Corapi’s Immortal Combat series or his CD on his conversion, or Spiritual Roots of Addiction; he will tell you that he saw boat loads of cocaine come in and a Satanic Priest or a witch doing animal sacrifice over the drugs. He himself had a cocaine addiction for a time; before he became a Priest. If anyone here has schizophrenia, please don’t take this personally, I know they didn’t all do drugs but a large portion do.

I think some mental illness is Demonic and what the Saints heard or saw was from God. The devil never says to good things; he tells people to kill and do evil. Things that are ungodly.

The original poster on that thread obviously doesn’t have a clue about schizophrenia, nor likely have they ever dealt with someone with the illness. I work with schizophrenics ALL the time, and they are so far from being like the descriptions of those saints it’s not even funny.

Schizophrenia affects EVERY aspect of a person’s personality, it’s not just a matter of hallucinations and paranoia. People who are familiar with the disease can spot someone with it very easily, often times before they even open their mouths. Seeing/hearing voices doesn’t even begin to sum up schizophrenia, and such a reduction is an insult both to those with the illness and those who have had supernatural experiences.

In fact, when you look at the whole picture of any given saint, and the whole picture of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, the most striking thing is how non-ill the saint’s actually seem. No medical professional worth their diploma would diagnose St. Francis with schizophrenia, nor St. Catherine of Sienna. On the contrary, their personalities and minds appear (at least based on their writings and witnesses) to be extremely stable. Their experiences were out of the ordinary, no doubt, but they were strikingly lucid and coherent, sometimes moreso than many perfectly “normal” people. That’s actually one of the most fascinating things about genuine mystics: they’re usually unnervingly normal for someone with such odd experiences. That’s one of the ways the Church tends to evaluate mystic experiences for authenticity.

The original poster on that thread obviously doesn’t have a clue about schizophrenia, nor likely have they ever dealt with someone with the illness. I work with schizophrenics ALL the time, and they are so far from being like the descriptions of those saints it’s not even funny

Are you familiar with the psychologist, who is a schizophrenic,
who is stabilitzed on medications, and is now head of
the facility in which he was once a patient?

Or the mathematical genius, subject of the movie:
A Beautiful Mind ?

Or the fact that Benedict Labre was declared a saint of
the Roman Catholic Church, a patron saint of mental illness,
who himself quite likely suffered from schizophrenia?

My father had paranoid schizophrenia.
I not only worked with him…he was my father.
I have schizotypal disorder, which I’m wont to
consider schizophrenia “lite”.

What most people “understand” about schizophrenia
could be comfortably situated in a peanut shell.:rolleyes:

While I do not believe that all the saints on that list were mentally ill, I think it is incredibly insentive of anyone to dismiss the saints and their beautiful witness to faith based on allegations of mental illness. God can make saints from the mentally ill just as readily as He can make saints from sane people who are physically ill. Whoever compiled that list is not merely prejudice against people of deep religious convictions, but also clearly prejudice against people with mental illness.

I’ve often wondered whether the Chronically Normal
[to borrow a phrase] are capable of understanding
that the mentally ill have a unique view into the
Passion of Christ?

For many know, from experience, what it is to wear [mentally]
a crown of thorns, and to sometimes cry out to God:
“My God, my God…why have you abandoned me.”

Additionally, the mentally ill are also in a unique position
to “…make up, in yourselves, the sufferings lacking to
Christ.” [paraphrase] To understand, more than most,
that God has gifted them with an opportunity for
redemptive suffering that is unavailable to those untouched
by such illness.
No “get well” cards, no words of comfort and support,
often enough.

Christ could not, as a man, suffer, in one lifetime, all of
the ills to which human beings are subject. It is the
priviledge of the clinically diagnosed mentally ill, to
join their sufferings with His, and to help “…make
up…for the sufferings lacking in Christ.”

I believe that to be a whole, new take on what the
world sees as a mysterious condition.

And they will never face the temptation to pride, that
those who are called “saints” in their own lifetimes,
faced. In fact, they are often marginalized by society,
and hardly face the prospect of being recognized for
what they sometimes are: priviledged individuals,
called to share in the Passion of Christ.

Are you familiar with the psychologist, who is a schizophrenic,
who is stabilitzed on medications, and is now head of
the facility in which he was once a patient?

Or the mathematical genius, subject of the movie:
A Beautiful Mind ?

Or the fact that Benedict Labre was declared a saint of
the Roman Catholic Church, a patron saint of mental illness,
who himself quite likely suffered from schizophrenia?

My father had paranoid schizophrenia.
I not only worked with him…he was my father.
I have schizotypal disorder, which I’m wont to
consider schizophrenia “lite”.

What most people “understand” about schizophrenia
could be comfortably situated in a peanut shell.:rolleyes:

Best,

reen12
[/quote]

I don’t understand the point of your post at all. We weren’t discussing people taking their meds, nor were we talking about schizotypal disorder. Those are neither pertainant to the OP, nor to mine. I certainly wasn’t discussing Benedict Labre, who wasn’t on the list in question. I don’t see the relevance of your post at all.

On a side note, the fact that you have schizotypal disorder doesn’t actually suprise me one bit. The post you just made, drawing hard connections that quite simply weren’t present nor obvious, is pretty typical of such a disorder. I mean absolutely no offense when I say that this kind of response of yours is precisely what we don’t find in people like St. Francis and St. Catherine.

All that being said, I not only work in medicine with the mentally ill of various types, I am also a diagnosed clinical depressive who will be taking medication daily for the rest of my life. People with such disorders can live perfectly productive lives when they/we stick to the medications. Our behavior patterns are simply not found in the vast majority of Catholic mystics, however, and that’s evidenced by history.

In short, no offense was intended, and I am intimately familiar with mental illness.

On a side note, the fact that you have schizotypal disorder doesn’t actually suprise me one bit. The post you just made, drawing hard connections that quite simply weren’t present nor obvious, is pretty typical of such a disorder

Geez Ghosty, I’m not mentally ill and i’d be very offended by your post! I think what the poster basically meant was that drawing a link to the saints and a mental illness isn’t something that’s necessarily appropriate here.

I, too, am very familiar with mental illness, my son is mentally ill. And, no, i don’t think that you can characterize mental illness with the lives of the saints. As one poster said, there’s a big difference between paranoid schizophrenia and mysticism.

Yeesh!

(remember, when you’re pointing a finger and a poster there’s three pointing back at you)

Drawing connections that aren’t present isn’t a function of intelligence. I do it all the time, and that’s why I take medication. It shows a disconnect with what people are actually saying and doing, not an enhanced awareness of it. I’m saying this as someone who suffers from such an affliction, not as someone who’s standing outside casting aspersions.

You are very familiar with schizophrenia by your own account, so you know that one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia is making connections between things that literally have no connection. This is why paranoia is a typical symptom of the disease: people see plots where there are the faintest of coincidences. Whether or not the schizophrenic is intelligent or not has nothing to do with the irrationality of their brain. It’s a serious illness that does not deserve to be brushed off as “intelligent eccentricity”.

Oddly, you self-identify as being schizotypal, and then you get offended when someone with direct experience with the illness in question says “Yeah, I can see that you suffer from it”.

Geez Ghosty, I’m not mentally ill and i’d be very offended by your post! I think what the poster basically meant was that drawing a link to the saints and a mental illness isn’t something that’s necessarily appropriate here.

That was actually my point. Please read my first post. I was the one saying that mental illness and the saints don’t go together. It was actually reen12 who drew the connection between mental illness and saints with St. Benedict Joseph Labre, who is the exception that proves the rule (not saying that there’s anything at all wrong with his example, he is a saint). Reen12’s response to my first post was an attack on a position that I wasn’t taking.

And, no, i don’t think that you can characterize mental illness with the lives of the saints. As one poster said, there’s a big difference between paranoid schizophrenia and mysticism.

Yes, and I was one of the posters who said that. I’m not here to point fingers at all, I was simply responding to a very non-sequitor response by reen12. I think you’re gravely misunderstanding my position and my intentions.

Schizophrenia is a serious disease that needs to be respected and understood. As reen12 said, it’s not a small cross to bear, nor is any mental illness. As someone who suffers daily from one, I know that all too well.

If religion were not involved, wouldn’t we pronounce these individuals insane, commit them and prescribe a course of electro-convulsive therapy and anti-psychotics?

But religion was involved! You can’t seperate them. That’s like saying, assume that vanilla ice cream is chocolate. The dividing line in this case is the religion.

If you hear voices, are you crazy? Well, if your family is talking in the next room, then no. If you’ve just picked up the phone and someone is on the line, then no. If God is talking to you, then no. If the voices are coming from your own mind, but you cannot distinguish that fact, then yes, you may have problems.

The fact with these saints was that God was talking to them and granting them visions and giving them special missions. If we were to remove religion from the situation, we’d also remove the voices, visions and missions, leaving a perfectly normal and healthy person. If you removed God completely, there wouldn’t even be a person, schizophrenic or otherwise, a world, or a message board to make this claim. :rolleyes:

Schizophrenia is a serious disease that needs to be respected and understood. As reen12 said, it’s not a small cross to bear, nor is any mental illness. As someone who suffers daily from one, I know that all too well.

You know, I read your last post, and I think you’re right.

Please understand that I am close to allergic to the
statement “I work with the mentally ill” or “I know someone
who has schizophrenia.” [not a family member].

In my experience, that is usually followed by statements
that demonstrate a stunning lack of insight.

I think you know whereof you speak, Ghosty, having
read your last post.

And you’re right, of course. Intelligence has nothing
to do with schizophrenia.

As to:
quote: Ghosty

You are very familiar with schizophrenia by your own account, so you know that one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia is making connections between things that literally have no connection. This is why paranoia is a typical symptom of the disease: people see plots where there are the faintest of coincidences. Whether or not the schizophrenic is intelligent or not has nothing to do with the irrationality of their brain. It’s a serious illness that does not deserve to be brushed off as “intelligent eccentricity”.

Oddly, you self-identify as being schizotypal, and then you get offended when someone with direct experience with the illness in question says “Yeah, I can see that you suffer from it”.

again, I think you’re right. But, geeeze, Ghosty,
couldn’t you have pitched it a little more subtley?

I genuinely mis-read a sentence in your original post.
I thought that you were saying that it was an insult
for the saint to be *considered *mentally ill.

I went back and re-read the sentence, and find that
you evinced sympathy for both the person who has
schizophrenia and the saint who’s experience is
being “reduced” to mere auditory and visual experiences.
[Perhaps it *was the “illness” reading the sentence.]

In any case, best to you, Ghosty, and if you wouldn’t
be offended, I’ll add a prayer in tonight for your own
walk with clinical depression.

I genuinely mis-read a sentence in your original post.I thought that you were saying that it was an insult
for the saint to be *considered *mentally ill.

Oh dear! I’m very sorry it came across that way! That was not my intention at all. I’m also sorry I came across as harsh and uncaring. I tend to get into a pretty clinical mode when posting on the forums, and my empathetic side doesn’t come out as well as it should :o I certainly wasn’t trying to belittle you in recognizing your disorder, and I see now I could have done more to show solidarity given the overall tone of my post.

I’m sorry for any confusion, and I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I too get a little touchy on subjects like these, being someone who has an often misunderstood illness. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that it was an insult in and of itself to call a saint mentally ill, I meant that it’s belittling to both the mentally ill (who suffer immensely in a way most people can’t fathom) and the true mystics (who experience the supernatural in a way that most people can’t fathom) to simply write them off as one and the same.

As you may know, when people with mental illnesses are viewed as simply having “alternative points of view”, we generally don’t get the help we genuinely need, and many end up hurting ourselves because we believe that we’re doing something wrong in not “thinking like the rest”. Likewise, when perfectly sane mystics have genuine supernatural experiences, they can often end up in a similar predicament, thinking that they’re actually sick when they aren’t.

That’s why it’s so very important to evaluate the whole person when they describe unusual experiences; there are often tell-tale signs of illness in the cases of those who are truly sick. The saints in question simply stand out because they lack those signs and symptoms. Too often the cynical secular world lumps the two together, doing a diservice to both groups.

God bless you, reen12, and I’ll graciously accept any prayers you offer, only if you let me do the same for you